Hey Yotam!

Istanbul awaits. I'm reading all I can about the place I've never been, except maybe in my mother's womb, as quick as I can. The normal method, a little high and a little low, is making me low so far as there's no Kurt Wallender or Commissario Brunetti to show me Istanbul, at least not from somebody who writes in a language I can read. Barbara Nadel tries in Arabesk, but it's not giving me enough deets on what we'll see to trump my annoyance that it doesn't do what a detective novel should, like give you any alibi for the most obvious suspect introduced in the first chapter and mentioned throughout. I'm skipping pages in my rush to find the highs, I hope, from Mr Pamuk.

Also, the New Yorker archives, reaching back a long time, but not nearly as long as the city itself, mind you, to 1934 and sour HL Mencken who carefully called it Istanbul, not Constantinople, and found the tomato red and mosque blue Oriental rugs just as ugly in shop windows as on American floors, along with a piece from 1989 including a little Attaturk history, and a recent one, 2010, on cheap eats by Elif Batuman, who deserves another chance despite writing what I'm sure was a great proposal to David Remnick ("I can be the Bill Buford of Turkish soccer clubs"), but not a great article.

All of which requires sustenance, tonight, in the form of hearty, hearty herbs, courtesy of Yotam Ottolenghi, the Jersulam born London chef who Baleen knew about years ago when she lived and worked in that city, but didn't know she should know about him until I got his cookbook. Maybe I'll cook it for you when you get back, Baleen, or maybe we'll go to one of the Ottolenghi locations together one day.

Before: Hopalong vs Herb Recognition Recollection

During: Hopalong vs Yotam

After: Hopalong vs Fatigue